Hi Pekka,

On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 17:47, Pekka Savola wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Andrew White wrote:
> > > Just responding to a few points..
> > 
> > Real example: My ISP's DSL connection decides to drop the connection and
> > reconnect (with a new IPv4 address, and thus 6to4 prefix) every 1-3 hours. 
> > I'd rather not subject my internal network to that if I don't have to.
> 
> Switch ISP or complain to them.  I certainly wouldn't bear with that kind 
> of behaviour.
> 
> If that kind of ISP techniques are commonplace, we may need to do 
> something.  But I'm not sure if that's the case.  Experiences?
> 

Here in Australia, the former government monopoly, now pseudo-government
(50.(something)%) / private (49.(something)%) telco, Telstra, owns the
CAN, which is used for pretty much all residential (at least probably
99%) ADSL.

Telstra use the ADSL network for both their own retail residential
customers, as well as wholesaling it to other ISPs, large and small.

Since the realisation that dial-up was a dying technology, a lot of the
dial up ISPs are providing ADSL, wholesaling it from Telstra. According
to this page (http://www.broadbandchoice.com.au/isp-list.cfm), there are
currently 149 residential ISPs in Australia, which is probably quite a
lot for a country with only 20 million or so people.

A typical residential ADSL service is :

* Single IPv4 address, so you have to use NAT if you want more than one
machine (although at least one enlightened ISP allows up to 8 PPP(oE|oA)
logins at once on a single ADSL service)

* A download cap eg 1000MB, 4000MB, etc. per month, with extra MB
charged at around $0.15 each etc

* The single IPv4 address can change over time. Most ISPs don't specify
the time period, and it varies, but I expect that having the same single
IPv4 address for a week is starting to be an an exception, rather than a
rule.

Some ISPs have introduced "unlimited" download plans, where, over a
rolling period, the more you download, the less priority your packets
get against other customers traffic.

A lot of these ISPs also want to provide business ADSL over the same
wholesaled ADSL infrastructure. They typically do this by :

* Guaranteeing a single IPv4 address, that won't change. 

* Optionally routing a prefix for the customer LAN ie. no NAT.

A lot of small business customers probably don't take this up, probably
because they are told about the "security" using NAT. I'd suspect in
most cases not having to change internal IPv4 addressing is not even a
"NAT or not" consideration.

* Providing a different helpdesk ph#, with shorter response times.

* Providing much lower download caps, to make more revenue on business
users downloading data.

Of course, they also charge a lot more for the business service,
typically twice as much or more, than the residential ADSL service.

Apparently, a lot of small businesses are going with residential plans,
as they don't find the business plan differences to be worth the money.
(http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm?id=1165&show=replies)

A lot of residential users, such as myself, get around some of the
changing IPv4 address issues by using dynamic DNS services, such as
http://www.dyndns.org.

I run a client on my linux server, which watches the ppp0 interface.
When the IPv4 address changes, it goes and updates the corresponding DNS
RR with the new IPv4 address information. The TTL on the RRs is 60s.

It would seem that a lot of residential ADSL users want to have domain
names to the point where some ADSL router vendors are even building
dynamic DNS clients into their devices.

(ps, being a purist (or just enlightened maybe) I don't run NAT. I only
have one PC that I want connected to the Internet, though, so I don't
need to either.)

> Note: consider how many of these techniques are used to prevent people
> from keeping servers at their home systems (i.e., does the ISP consider
> the changing address a bug or feature).

Certainly a feature.

ISPs quickly learnt not to filter incoming TCP / UDP ports to prevent
people running "servers", http or otherwise, so they use the reliability
of the single IPv4 address they allocate as a dis-incentive to running a
"server".

"Uploads" typically aren't capped, so you could run a heavily trafficed
server, with only the client's TCP Acks contributing to your download
quota. Of course TCP Acks are pretty small, you can fit a lot of them
within a monthly quota of 1000 or 4000 MB.

  Also consider how the situation
> would change (if any) with IPv6 provided by the ISP.
> 

I'd suspect they would probably allocate periodically changing /128s to
their residential ADSL users.

Of course, 6to4 is a way around that, but it probably won't take them
long to wise up and start filtering that.

> Real example: at home, I use DHCP on DSL to get addresses.  During 1 year,
> the addresses have changed _once_ (the ISP changed the prefix from which
> it allocated the DSL users' addresses).  That's good enough for me, and I
> even manually glue all the IPv4 and resulting 6to4 addresses in my
> configuration files, filters etc.

So what is the weather like in Finland ? I might consider moving :-)


Hope my (long winded) description is useful,
Mark.


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